Ask HN: Did you learn a language this year? - <AUTHOR>

I thought about doing a poll, but I think it'd be more interesting to see what people learned and why (or perhaps not learned and why). This year I can't say I've "learned" a language although I have dabbled in Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell. <comment><USER2> I learned Prolog and logic and constraint programming in general. Not only did I learn the Prolog language and some of it's dialects for constraint programming and fuzzy logic as a part of a logic programming course, I also wrote an interpreter for a Prolog-like programming language in Haskell as a part of an AI course.

Prolog and Logic programming in general are really worth learning. They will definitely widen your horizons when it comes to programming. Implementing a logic programming system will also teach some basic pattern matching and unification algorithms and applying them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I learnt Python this year. I went from being a fulltime LAMP employee to contracting in Python.

In May I started spending a few hours every night after the gym working on Django apps, mostly re-building my blog and just fell in love with everything Pythonic.

In August I started applying for Python contracts around London and one came through in about three weeks. I've since managed to only be out of work eight days since the beginning of September. I've done well enough to take six months off and travel around Asia next year.

I'm really glad I did this as I was unhappy being an employee and LAMP coding felt like I was untangling other people's piles of cables all the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I played with Haskell, to the point of being able to read and understand larger chunks of Haskell code - but I haven't written anything of note in it yet. Not sure I ever will, either. I started playing with it due to git-annex (which was written in Haskell, and that triggered the interest) and the LYAH book (which is beyond awesome, by the way). Coming from an OO/imperative background, functional programming seemed interesting, and even though I didn't end up using Haskell, the tricks and ideas I borrowed did have a huge impact on me.

The other language I played a lot with, and ended up using a lot this year is Clojure. The main reason I started learning it is because its not only a LISP, it's a mostly functional, yet, practical language, whose concurrency and paralellism support is unparalelled. Being a JVM language, with great interoperability with Java also means that I can use existing Java libraries. All in all, it had great properties, and a syntax I was already somewhat familiar with (being an Emacs user for the past 12 years or so did expose me to at least some lisp, after all!), so my next few projects, which will likely see the light of day in early 2012, will be written in Clojure.

I also learned a bit about sparc assembly, because I had to, and as much as I didn't want to, I learned to read PHP a little bit better than I used to. I'm not exactly proud of that, but nevertheless, that's what happened.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've learned JS, after being very reluctant to it for a long while, and I gladly found out it's actually a very interesting and missunderstood language!

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm in the process of learning Python. I don't know the internals as deeply as I'd like, but I've used it superficially pretty effectively. It has pretty much replaced Perl for me, but there's still some things about it that annoy me. However it's easy to use, and I'm happy I started the ball rolling on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I learned Smalltalk (Pharo dialect). It was awesome. Took me two weeks to go from zero to write a small rss reader in it.

Resources:

<http://www.pharocasts.com>

<http://www.usmug.org>

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if I really learned a "new" language this year (i.e. one I had never touched before), but I did spend a lot of time on improving my understanding of some languages which were more important to me, and learning some new frameworks and libraries.

In particular, I spent a lot of time digging into OpenMP and MPI programming in Fortran and C, and getting a better understanding of SciPy and NumPy. (If you hadn't guessed, I work in HPC. :-) ) I also worked on a couple of webapps using Bottle (Python) and Dancer (Perl), which were new frameworks to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've learned/am learning Python for about a year now mostly because I've always worked with C type languages, except Pascal and (TI) Basic long time ago, and wanted to try something different. It's so much fun to program with it, I'm having some trouble wanting to use anything else.

I've also played with OCaml and R, not to the extent of actually understanding them, and learned a fair (i guess) amount of Octave by doing ml-class problems.

I think actually learning R may be on the table next due some dabbling in machine learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> This year:

\- I wrote my first C++ app using Qt

\- I tried getting into Django and RoR, coming from a PHP background. Unfortunately, I haven't yet had a chance to code anything worthwhile in either Python or Ruby.

My goals in 2012:

\- Create a non-trivial Ruby or Python app. Still haven't chosen between the two. Ruby currently seems more popular but Python is used quite a bit in my company and for engineering applications in general.

\- Program an HTML5/JS game, eventually using GameJS.

\- Maybe learn Java for Android.

</comment><comment><USER11> I learned french ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> I learned Clojure this year, but I don't think I have finished learning it. So my plan for next year is to study on it until I am comfortable enough with it (which would be: good enough to make some money from something built in Clojure) -right now I am having a look at Seesaw to builf GUI's in Clojure, I am quite impressed! Then I will go for some low-level C, and after that Haskell probably.

I hope I'll remember in December 2012 to ask myself "well, how far did I get in Clojure/C/Haskell?"

</comment><comment><USER13> This year...I learned SAS Macro Programming to automate roughly twelve analyst jobs (including my own), a whole bunch of SQL (for the new job that replaced the automated one), some basic common lisp for fun (up to writing a Sudoku solver in ~150 LoC), and have just started on Clojure (because I love lisp, but want to be able to actually use it).

</comment><comment><USER14> Coming from a Java and Grails background, I debuted as a Rails developer this year and was very impressed by Ruby and the framework too. Also tried some basic Clojure, solved most of the Clojure koans and solved 48 problems (so far) on 4Clojure.com ... I'd love to learn more and build something with it on 2012.

</comment><comment><USER15> Common Lisp, although I started learning it last year. I don't know if it counts, but I learned SQL and I'm currently studying relational theory in more depth. I also had to take a course on Prolog, but I'd be bullshiting you all if I said I knew prolog, I know enough of it to write factorial and reverse lists.

</comment><comment><USER16> Learned Ruby/Rails, dived deeper onto JS but still a n00b. Next year will be either Scala or Clojure.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wouldn't consider it a new language, but after all the back-and-forth articles on HN about CoffeeScript, this year I really spent some time learning the fundamentals of it.

Mostly though, I just drastically extended my capability with the languages I already know.

</comment><comment><USER18> I learned Ruby. I've used Grails a lot on the past but it's to heavy for my new projects. I decided to take a look at Sinatra and found out that Rails was actually the perfect fits for my needs. I also learned Sass and Coffeescript.

</comment><comment><USER19> I learned CoffeeScript (an node.js at all), played with Clojure and C (really, I didn't know it at all) this year.

Gonna deepen my Clojure and C knowledge, play with D, play with Haskell, Erlang and some Lua next year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I learned Verilog at my summer job, and discovered that FPGAs are _freaking awesome_. (I also learned Perl and Python there, neither of which are awesome. Abandon hope all ye who enter the NetFPGA toolchain!)

</comment><comment><USER21> I learned Javascript, Coffeescript and did some cool stuff with that, and have studied German and Japanese a bit.

But I have studied language itself more than a specific language.

</comment><comment><USER22> I learnt Ruby this year, because I read Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby and it made me really excited about it's simplicity and readability. I used it to build Hackerbuddy.com.

</comment><comment><USER23> I learned JavaScript, client-side (both jquery and native) and server-side (node.js). I haven't touched any other language for about...two months.

</comment><comment><USER24> Dabbled in Lua, not had chance to play with many languages this year but managed to get my head around lot of new mobile frameworks and tooling

</comment><comment><USER25> No. I did some serious work on jQuery, but that's a library rather than a language; and in the process also revised JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nothing really much for me.. Improved my Javascript by writing Chrome Extensions, but I do want to learn Node.js and MongoDB.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yep, TXL (<http://www.txl.ca>).

Cheers, www.nkavvadias.com/hercules/

</comment><comment><USER28> haskell! cannot say i master it, but i build a little something (<https://github.com/cies/thehall>), and certainly experienced the beauty of it. it was quite a painful experience coming from the OO continent, but then: no pain, no gain -- right?

</comment><comment><USER29> C#, but that went hand in hand with the Visual Studio and IIS stack.

C# is good, IIS has a ways to go imho.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am relearning PHP for a job, and additionally have fiddled around some with haXe.

</comment><comment><USER31> I learnt python. It's awesome.

</comment><comment><USER32> C++ and (unrelated project) starting to play with ruby and rails...

</comment><comment><USER33> I learned Python and some PHP for my turn on the DevOps space.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not really.. I was comfortable with javascript/php :)

</comment><comment><USER35> learned javascript in order to learn backbone. I'm amazed by its simplicity and quirks all at the same time (php background).

</comment><comment><USER36> Nope. Far too busy building out our product.

</comment><comment><USER37> C++, matlab and (erk!) actionscript 3

</comment><comment><USER38> went from PHP to a bit of Ruby and extended my skills in JavaScript land with learning CoffeeScript

</comment><comment><USER39> I learned JavaScript and node.js

</comment><comment><USER40> I started with OOP and C++

</comment><comment><USER41> I started learning C.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes, Arc.</comment>


Aus Government will block overseas websites that refuse to collect GST - <AUTHOR> https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/online-shopping/buying-online/articles/gst-overseas-website-block <comment><USER2> "It's critical to understand that the website blocking capability will only ever be used to prevent the worst crimes.

It's definitely NOT the thin end of the wedge."

\- some luddite politician prior to legislation requiring blocking technology

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who think this is addressing a relatively small problem, one of the major Australian banks analysed [1] the accounts of 1 million of its customers (1 in 22 Australians) in 2011 and found that 74% of e-commerce by revenue was cross-border. Three quarters! In some markets, over 90% of the revenue was from abroad.

It's not just fashion and cosmetics, things like lawn mowers were also getting imported.

Part of the problem was AUD appreciation which put the MSRP of most things a good 50% above the rest of the world. Coupled with high costs in Australia (due to tight labour legislation which helps sustain an egalitarian culture), no Australian retailer could compete. The AUD has weakened substantially since then so I wonder if the picture has changed enough to make GST matter.

Charging GST might help a little bit, but the issue is FX, high local costs, and relatively cheap international shipping. For example, ASOS offers free international shipping so long as you are ready to wait 4 weeks. This is fine with most customers who prefer buying the same jeans for $60 and wait to paying twice as much and having them instantly. They employ only a handful of people in Australia to manage inbound shipments and customs, but it is (was, 3 years ago when I last looked) a significant chunk of their global profits.

That being said, protectionism didn't work out for the Australian car industry.

[1] [http://globalmarketsresearch.commbank.com.au/ReportWeb/d13de...](http://globalmarketsresearch.commbank.com.au/ReportWeb/d13debf3b-701e335e5cad/Onlineretaildata-28-Jul-2011-0008-1.pdf)

<comment><USER4> FYI your link got messed up by a space, might want to edit it

<comment><USER3> Thanks, done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Correction: Australian government will attempt to restrict IP addresses of certain sellers when a large, party-supporting local retailer submits a complaint about them. (I.E. Gerry Harvey)

</comment><comment><USER5> _" New regulations, announced in 2015 and to be implemented from July 2017, require overseas businesses with an Australian annual turnover of $75,000 or more to collect GST on all goods, including those under the current $1000 low- value threshold "_

It's not the fact the Aus government collecting tax is bad, remember Apple, Google and a slew of other companies are recognised corporate tax cheats, it's the fact this legislation can be used as a tool to ^ban^ more of the Internet.

<comment><USER6> > _"...remember Apple, Google and a slew of other companies are recognised > corporate tax cheats..."_

I fail to see how one can make this assertion without any citations. Apple has paid over 19B in tax expenses in 2015 [1]. Alphabet(Google) has paid over 3B[2]. No other company I could find came remotely close to Apple's level. For some perspective, their tax expense is greater than 44% of the world's countries GDPs[3]. If one reads the definition of _tax cheat_ at Investopedia[4] it does not apply to Apple nor Google.

You may not like those companies and you may not believe that they pay enough in taxes but this does not connote that they are "recognized tax cheats".

[1][https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL) [2][https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/financials?p=GOOG](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/financials?p=GOOG) [3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)) [4][http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tax- cheat.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tax-cheat.asp)

<comment><USER7> I'm sure the GP was talking in reference to the amount of tax those companies paid on their Australian business.

See for example here: [http://www.smh.com.au/business/the- economy/apples-85-million...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/the- economy/apples-85-million-tax-bill-is-a-fraction-of-its-almost-8-billion- revenue-20160126-gmej0z.html)

Google, Microsoft and others are in a similar position.

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/apr/08/googl...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/apr/08/google-apple-and-microsoft-defend-tax-set-up-that-shifts- revenue-offshore)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They want companies in every other country outside of Australia to collect and remit tax to the Australian Tax Office?? Good luck with that!

Imagine trying to get Sven's Online Yak-hair Mocassins in Norway to complete a quarterly BAS.

Surprised they are not focusing on LOCAL Aussie ecommerce sites that don't collect and remit GST for local sales.

<comment><USER9> If Sven manages to sell $75,000 AUD worth of moccasins to Australians, he might reasonably have the resources to collect the taxes as well.

That's not to say he will, but I feel that selecting 75k as a threshold falls on the side of "it's cheaper to comply", which is the right move.

<comment><USER10> $75,000 gross retail, at a usually far smaller profit margin -- call it $7500.

Do you seriously expect someone to hire a tax attorney for Australia over that much income? That's the price of walking into the door.

<comment><USER11> If they are smart they will make the tax so simple you don't need an attorney: just slap a decimal point in the right place and send a check to an easy to find address.

<comment><USER7> Let me put it like this. The ATO's website for submitting quarterly tax statements requires a Java Applet to perform verification with a private key stored on your machine.

Despite Java's "Write Once, Run Everywhere" promise, every single update of my OS (mac) and/or browser would cause issues because the OS and browsers are actively trying to prevent you from running Java Applets for security reasons.

Which I understand, and also support, but it means that I'd be locked out of the site and had to spend a couple of hours hunting around forums posts trying to find a solution - and sometimes one wouldn't even exist.

My current solution to this problem is to have a locked down, non-updating Windows VM that I use exclusively for filing my business activity statements.

It's a pain for me to do it. I don't think it's going to be any easier for Sven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here in Canada, anything that exceeds the low value item exemption (which is ridiculously low at $20) gets taxed at the border when it enters the country. This is a pain, yes, but at least you're still able to buy whatever overseas goods you want. The Australian solution seems.. illogical at best. Savvy buyers can just work around the blocks, but others will be left without goods that they could have otherwise purchased, albeit with a bit of a delay.

Obviously the goal is to coerce sites into collecting the taxes to keep the business, but surely that could be done within the existing system, without bringing internet censorship into it. For instance, they could de-prioritize processing of shipments where taxes weren't collected, giving companies an incentive to comply (since they would have an advantage in shipping time over competitors who don't). This approach seems unnecessarily heavy-handed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Australian use of VPNs is about to skyrocket!

<comment><USER7> Nah, it's already pretty high thanks to Netflix and similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone who knows about tax law explain what the scope of the GST is with regards to imports? I.e. how big of a deal is this?

Does everyone who sells items to Australian purchasers have to pay GST? Or is the GST only applied for some corner cases where, (for example) Australians sell stuff to each other, but involve an oversees leg in the deal?

(Edit: this is of course a seperate issue from how blocking capabilities can be abused in future...)

<comment><AUTHOR> The _current_ situation is that you are required to register and remit GST if you make AUD$75,000 worth of GST-taxable supplies "connected with Australia". This fairly lengthy ruling speaks to what falls under that term: [https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR20003...](https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR200031/NAT/ATO/00001)

Currently items under AUD$1000 which aren't alcohol or "bulk orders" are "low- value imports" and aren't taxed, so they don't count in the $75,000 threshold. This is one of the things that's changing in July 2017 - the removal of the low-value threshold.

In the current system, if you directly ship goods from outside Australia to the end-customer in Australia it is deemed that the _customer_ is the one that's importing it, and therefore the one responsible for the GST (they're supposed to pay it to Customs). It's not a "supply connected with Australia" and doesn't count in the $75,000 threshold.

It _sounds_ like this last provision is changing as well but it's actually hard to find the details on this. There's just high-level descriptions like [http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenu...](http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenue-10.htm) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Australia takes Howards doctrine of 'punching above it's weight' and without any meaningful leadership just punches itself in the face. Seriously Straya, why are you punching yourself? Why are you punching yourself? HAHAHAH... Why are you punching yourself? Why are you punching yourself?

<comment><USER16> As a citizen watching those in charge, it feels more like I'm the embarrassed child at a bbq watching our drunk dad slur something racist about the neighbours, take a swing at his brother in law for something he misheard, trip over his thongs and spill beer all over his pants.

<comment><USER15> Australians have mastered the art of crab mentality. Dodge those pincers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Given how large the e-commerce market is and how high the sales tax is, I'm sure a substantial black market will form around avoiding this tax. Privacy concerns may not be enough to motivate people to use VPNs or proxies but hit their pocketbooks and I'm sure the use of these tools will take off.

The black market infrastructure that shields the origin of these goods will also shield fraudulent merchants from consumer challenges and regulators. I imagine it will also give cover to narcotics and other illegal goods by conflating the purchasing behavior of law-abiding and criminal buyers and also the behavior of merchants.

</comment><comment><USER18> What about just charging customs fees like everyone else in the world?

<comment><USER19> They originally were doing that but the volume of imports was so high they couldn't deal with the processing back log. Then they moved to only charging GST on imports over $1000 AUD. That actually worked really well. Then they got greedy. And were pushed by powerful retail owners to do something.

The whole thing is ridiculous because there are far bigger fish escaping the frying pan that they just ignore. Like the whole negative gearing property issue. They don't touch that massive tax hole because the individual politicians themselves are making huge coin off it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems unlikely it'd actually get implemented.

<comment><USER21> That's what we thought about metadata retention

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would be smarter to just remove GST from goods that are commonly imported altogether.

Could offset the lost revenue with non-renewable energy taxes, land value taxes, capital gains taxes.

<comment><USER12> It's my understanding that a sales tax is one of the better revenue sources from a fiscal policy perspective. Its primary downside is the difficulty of collection, but otherwise the incentives are good. On the other hand, something like a capital gains tax discourages investment. (Not saying that shouldn't exist, just that it's not clear it's superior to a GST.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Australian companies when selling to the EU have to collect and pay VAT. This seem only fair that those same EU retailers now must collect and pay GST?

It would make more sense if they just banned the stores ability to remit funds via the VISA/Mastercard (etc) networks.

<comment><USER24> _" Australian companies when selling to the EU have to collect and pay VAT."_

Unless there's a special deal between Aus and EU I've never heard of, then no. If you bought goods from outside EU, you pay VAT and import taxes (if applicable) at the customs.

 _" If you buy goods for the purposes of your business from a supplier based outside the EU, you must generally pay VAT at the point of import"_[1]

1\. [http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/vat-customs/cross- borde...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/vat-customs/cross- border/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER23> Consumers arent businesses.

You are wrong.

[https://quaderno.io/blog/what-you-must-know-about-vat-if- you...](https://quaderno.io/blog/what-you-must-know-about-vat-if-you-have- customers-in-europe/)

<comment><USER24> No, your link only talks about _digital goods_ , that are exemptions. Of course, you can't pay VAT for digital goods (subscriptions, ebooks, mp3 etc.) on arrival, because there's no shipping and thus customs are avoided, so VAT must be included in sale's price.

Here's information regarding buying from non-EU countries for individuals[1] and it clearly states: _" As soon as you buy a product from a non-EU country, then effectively you become an importer and become liable to Customs and Excise Duty as well as Value Added Tax (VAT) payments."_

1\. [https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/buying- goo...](https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/buying-goods- services-online-personal-use/buying-goods/buying-goods-online-coming-from-a- noneu-union-country_en)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Simulating gunfire in naval wargames (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2016/02/simulating-gunfire-in-naval-wargames.html <comment><USER2> Reading this, and looking at the pictures and discussions about range reminded me of a time years ago (when I was a kid) reading the journal of a WWII combat vessel captain.

He was captain of a large battleship (akin to the Bismarck or Tirpitz) and I guess these ships were mainly used in long range stand off attacks, because he would talk about seeing the muzzle flashes of enemy ships through his telescope, then waiting _30 to 90 seconds_ to see where the shells would land near/on his ship.

I was always enthralled by the fact that you knew shells were heading your way bringing death and destruction, but you had to wait around a minute to see if they missed you or they impacted your vessel, and in that time, you had to plot an evasive manoeuvre as well as return fire solutions.

The distance and isolation of sea combat somehow makes it more haunting than the land warfare equivalent of an artillery barrage.

<comment><USER3> When cannons were common on land it was not unussual to see cannonballs bouncing across the field towards you. As they were subsonic, you also could hear them coming.

<comment><USER4> After seeing this video I am not so sure those reports are accurate:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL1DkrYL70s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL1DkrYL70s)

<comment><USER2> I am thinking @sandworm is talking about the old round iron cannonballs (akin to those fired from pirate ships etc) rather than the more modern explosive projectiles that are shown in your video post.

That also reminds me of another story I read that was penned by a cavalry officer in the 1800's. He said that the only time you could see a cannonball in flight on the battlefield was when it was pretty much heading straight for you.

He recalls an incident once when he met a fellow horseback officer in the middle of a battlefield during a lull in combat, and while talking, the other officer's horse rested its head against his leg. While chatting, he noticed a black blur approaching in the sky out of the corner of his vision and reactively flinched back, and a cannon ball brushed his collar and smashed into the horse's head that was leaning against his leg, instantly killing the poor creature.

<comment><USER5> Ah the classic story of the headless-horse man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember reading about a model boating society that, instead of wargaming, would create scale models of famous warships and fight them - the hulls would be thin wood, and the turrets had motorised mounts and compressed air guns capable of firing a metal pellet through the wooden hulls. The ships would have less internal bulkheads (to account for the damage explosive shells would cause) but would otherwise try to be as true to life as was possible given the limits of technology (I don't think anyone was building gyro-stabilised gun platforms, for example, as it was too hard to minituarize).

There was even a proposal to build larger scale ships that used small-calibre handgun ammunition and sheetmetal hulls, but it was shot down (if you'll forgive my pun) for being wildly unsafe and probably illegal (as I understand civilians are generally discouraged from owning remote-controllable firing mechanisms).

<comment><USER7> If anybody has a link or video to this, I would be extremely interested in it.

<comment><USER8> Model Warship Combat seems to be a good search term: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Model+Warship+Combat](https://www.google.com/search?q=Model+Warship+Combat)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless you've seen one up close it's hard to wrap your head around how big naval guns are.

I work in a converted naval gun factory, built in WWII. They used to take the main guns off battleships and reline them every hundred shots or so, and my building was a huge machine shop set up to replace the linings.

The gantry crane used to take the guns off the railroad cars they were shipped on is still in place. The hook of the crane is a solid piece of steel. It is larger than my Honda.

<comment><USER10> Great photo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uss_iowa_bb-61_pr.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uss_iowa_bb-61_pr.jpg)

notice the boats along the port side near the aft gun. And, forward of the aft gun, and between the deck houses, are several grey rectangles. Each one has 4 Tomahawk missiles. Those "coffins" are roughly the size of tractor trailers.

One thing you'll notice: no humans. The shockwave will kill you.

<comment><USER11> I incorrectly assumed the tomahawks would be on VLS launch platforms but no, they're like surface launched or something. Took a while to look for those "coffins" when I was looking for a square on the deck :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember being at Gen-Con in the 90's and seeing a game of Harpoon[1] going on. It was pretty amazing seeing all of the ships they were using. Maybe not as impressive as some of the Warhammer setups, but still pretty cool. I remember talking to a few of the folks and they believed it was the best game of this type. Larry Bond was also an author of some note.

1) [http://www.larry-bond.com/games.htm](http://www.larry-bond.com/games.htm)

<comment><USER2> I never played tabletop Harpoon, but the IBM-PC computer game Harpoon was one of my favourites many decades ago. It was a game that highlighted the devastative power of air superiority over pure naval engagements. A squadron of soviet Blackjack bombers armed with Kitchen missiles could take out an entire carrier group or ground base while staying out of reach of carrier based fighters.

Wish there was a version of this game that runs in a browser or on modern tablets.

<comment><USER13> You could absolutely run Harpoon in like dosbox on an android tablet or such.

The modern version/remake/inspired product is "Command" [https://store.steampowered.com/app/321410/Command_Modern_Air...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/321410/Command_Modern_Air__Naval_Operations_WOTY/)

<comment><USER14> CMANO is great if you can get past the spartan graphics and UI (and to be honest the target market for such games probably doesn't care much about the presentation as long as the gameplay is solid). There's something uniquely satisfying about watching military engagements play out as you direct the units.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget the rather high price for a "video game". I do find it interesting that the group behind it distributes the database of unit information that backs the actual game for "free" (it's just available, with AFAIU, no hoops to jump through)

<comment><USER14> $80 is pretty nuts and I don't think I would buy it for that much. I got in on sale for I think $25.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting how in these early wargames (see also H.G. Wells' "Little Wars" from 1913) firing was simulated by a physical action while in modern games this is generally settled by dice or other random number generator.

<comment><USER16> it lasted quite a while, it was around mid eighties that the love for gitzmo faded and everything became a roll.

they getting back tho, at least looking at the Kickstarter trends in board games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Post is from 2016

<comment><USER18> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need help on marketing copy - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
Firstly, just wanted to say thank you all for the inspiration in the Hacker News community. I'm proud to say that it's the #1 place where I visit on the web apart from email. I've finally decided to try my hand at starting something simple. I would love if you can help me out by providing a comment or two on marketing copy.
My site is http://beta.phonerifique.com/ and essentially, I'm just an online calling card service. I am still trying to figure out my advantages over my competitors and am in the process of developing a SWOT analysis. Nevertheless, I would be happy if this earns me about $200/month.
Thanks, HN community! <comment><USER2> Hi, your copy is really confusing.

I didn't understand what your business did until I read the comment here on HN. My suggestions:

Your H1 copy should be something that tells me exactly what you do and how it benefits me. Ex: "Save $$$ on long distance calls to anywhere in North America"

Your H2 could then be: "Phonerifique is a pre-paid phone service with rates as low .05c/min! Call anywhere in the US and Canada for cheap."

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. I realized that I was rash in just putting up the copy. You and several other people have also mentioned that didn't get what's going on. I'll definitely have to spend some time to work on it and I'll definitely look into your suggestions and post an update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've only ever bought calling cards when I wanted to be in control of how much I spent.It's an added bonus if the charges are easy to understand i.e one flat rate and it saves you money too.

I don't know how the pay as you go would work. I don't think I'd be comfortable using a long distance service unless I could set a limit that I couldn't spend past. Then it's my choice if I want to spend more or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I do agree that I have been thinking about having the flat rate and being able to limit on a certain amount.

About "one flat rate", do you mean to say that it would make more sense to say how many minutes you would get from $10 or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I am still trying to figure out my advantages over my competitors"

You need this it's very important. Your copy will flow from your key advantage. At the moment your just another calling card.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Ian. Yes, I definitely agree that I need to flush out why I'm an advantage over the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://beta.phonerifique.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> is it a pre-paid calling card to avoid long distance charges or to activate cell phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was originally thinking about a pre-paid calling "card" where you load up your balance online and you just dial one of our numbers, enter a PIN and dial the number you'd like to call.

But then, I thought it might be interesting to go for "Pay as you go" where we'll charge you for however long you talk.</comment></comment>


Extracting Structured Data from Recipes Using Conditional Random Fields - <AUTHOR> http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting-structured-data-from-recipes-using-conditional-random-fields/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Could anyone go into more detail on why a CRF is a good model for this kind of task? In the article they say that is was good for similar tasks:

> We chose to use a discriminative structured prediction model called a > linear-chain conditional random field (CRF), which has been successful on > similar tasks such as part-of-speech tagging and named entity recognition.

But they don't say why they chose if over some sort of markov model (chain, hidden, etc).

<comment><USER3> All the things you mentioned (plus e.g. bayesian networks and Restricted Boltzmann Machines) are examples of Graphical Models. You can roughly think of (linear chain) CRFs as being to HMMs as logistic regression is to Naive Bayes. HMMs and Naive bayes learn a joint probability distribution on the data while Log Reg and CRFs fit conditional probabilities.

If none of that makes sense then, basically, in general and with more data, the CRF (or discriminative classifier) will tend to make better predictors because they don't try to _directly_ model complicated things that don't really matter for prediction anyways. Because of this they can use richer features without having to worry about how such and such relates to this or that. All this ends up making discriminative classifiers more robust when model assumptions are violated because they don't sacrifice as much to remain tractable (or rather, the trade off/sacrifice they make tends to end up not mattering as much when prediction accuracy is your main concern).

So in short, you use a HMM instead of a Markov Chain when the sequence you're trying to predict is not visible. Like say when you want to predict the parts of speech but only have access to words, you'll use the relationship between the visible sequence of words to learn the hidden sequence of Parts of speech labels. You use CRFs instead of HMMs because they tend to make better predictors while remaining tractable. The downside is discriminative classifiers will not necessarily learn the most meaningful decision boundaries, this starts to matter when you want to move beyond just prediction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool solution to something that can be really painful. I built a recipe catalog mobile app a few years ago that incorporated a 'smart' shopping cart that would sum up ingredients from different recipes, like '2 hard boiled eggs' and '1 egg yolk' to show them in your cart as '3 eggs'. We had only a hundred-odd recipes so this became a manual process (including entering the structured data in a crappy CMS much like the one described in the article), but I felt the whole time that this was a problem aching for some sort of great solution.

<comment><USER5> Definitely. A lot of problems can benefit from sequence labeling. I did a similar thing with labeling malware names[1] and it worked really well with only about a hundred examples for each type of sequence.

[1][http://lqdc.github.io/using-machine-learning-to-name- malware...](http://lqdc.github.io/using-machine-learning-to-name-malware.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9349918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9349918)

</comment><comment><USER5> I will buy a beer to anyone who implements a good fast 2nd order linear-chain CRF in an imperative lang like C++/Julia/Cython/Python+Numba. Many many models would benefit from higher order information.

My current implementation is slowish and the fast ones like crfsuite are only 1st order. FlexCRF is buggy. There are literally no good 2nd order CRF libs.</comment>


Escaping the Cycle of Technical Debt - <AUTHOR> http://blog.serverfault.com/2012/02/07/escaping-the-cycle-of-technical-debt/

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading. It starts with the topic of technical debt, to conquer another issue which is performance. Now, I know that performance is important, but I'm looking for articles in technical debt. Give me the right title.

Technical debt may seem strange. It's not obvious at first, when you are young and adventurous. This is especially pronounced when you are selling products per license and guaranteeing free bugs fixing and some (even limited) support.

When I started, I didn't know it. I built the product and made the math of hours spent building, and hours to be spent on maintenance. It worked until I figured that my product was full of bugs, and I can't fix them but need to build it from top to bottom.

This is a technical debt. Because when your time is money, spending time on these issues (that ought to be fixed before selling) is like spending money. And it can get expensive to the point of shutting down the whole thing. Yes, you sell, you are profitable, you have zero costs (it's downloaded software) but you go bankrupt.

<comment><USER3> One quibble, spending time isn't "like" spending money, it _is_ spending money. It costs money to make software because developers spend time working on software. Time = money = budget.

<comment><USER4> This seems straightforward and true, but in specific cases you should look deeper. A surprising number of software developers work unpaid overtime, and give their time to their employers for free. As well, the amount of producitivity that computers enable an individual to produce, when compared to how much the individual is paid for that, reduces time to being almost free.

If you only have to pay someone $20/hr, but every 400 hours or so they pop out some tiny bit of work that ends up being worth $500k in savings, you've only paid $8k for $500k profit. The 'cost' in terms of developer time is so stupendously cheap that worrying about wasting it is really a waste of effort.

Now, if developers realized the amount of money they save/made their company and they expected to be paid on the basis of THAT value, instead of simply settling for 'market rate' wages (which never take into account the actual value the position creates at any point), then it would make sense to worry about such things. But, developers, like most employees, are kept very ignorant of their impact to the company. Those who actually get to see their fiscal impact and who can't be lied to (top level managers, sales people) don't make market rate wages. It is their time you should be worrying about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent post: short, to the point and helpful. However, I find the title slightly misleading. Performance is not the only form of technical debt. Arguably, there are forms that are even worse than performance. If you're looking for the generic recipe for breaking out of the typical technical debt nightmare, the solution isn't in this post. Doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, though ;)

<comment><USER6> I agree. I always considered maintainability to be the main part of technical debt. You do it quickly, but only you understand how it works. Then you refactor it (preferably against [unit] tests). Nobody wants unmaintainable code in their codebase yet it sometimes appears...

The only aspect of performance I would consider technical debt is how your software scales. When you have 2x as many users will the load be 2+epsilon times higher or 10 times. Or what if 10% of your users performed some action at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Broken gets fixed, but shitty lasts forever"

</comment><comment><USER3> Bad code is a time sink.

Think about it. Good code doesn't have many bugs, it's easy to maintain, extend, and improve, and it's easy to review manually to look for defects. Thus, modifying good code or interfacing with good code takes very little time and very few attempts to get right.

So where does our time get spent? Working with and using bad code of course. Bad code is hard to modify and extend, but almost all code needs modification in its life. Modifying bad code takes a lot of time and effort because it's crufty and broken so it tends to at best maintain or lower the overall code quality while adding features. Bad code spawns bad code. Poor APIs lead to clumsy workarounds and hacks in client code, which trickles down as technical debt elsewhere. Bad code tends to be awkward and difficult to follow so in order to ensure quality it needs to be tested thoroughly, which takes a lot of effort.

Technical debt has interest, and it's typically a pretty high rate. Pretty soon you find your development velocity is slowed because all your time is absorbed by dealing with bad code.

My advice: identify bad code and be ruthless about setting aside dedicated time to eradicate it. Have a policy or culture of constant refactoring when anyone makes a code change. Keep track of your major pain points and strive to solve them. Sometimes that's not possible if you are in a giant company but sometimes you can get a lot more done than you'd imagine. The best teams are the ones who spend their time writing more good code to go with existing good code, they tend to be exponentially more productive than teams who get bogged down in firefighting as a way of life.</comment>


Apple's Original iphone from 1983 - <AUTHOR> http://www.jaymug.com/post/14566710512/original-apple-iphone-1983-designer-hartmut

<comment><USER2> It's funny I never knew about that project, but in the early 90s there was a smartphone movement that was active in the east coast mostly focused around bell labs as I recall (mostly focused around ISDN). The idea very similar to what that photo shows: A desk based phone with some computer functionality. The project never became real although something very similar from that era was minitel in france in the 80s: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel></comment>


Ask HN: how to determine angel round valuation? - <AUTHOR>

Your thoughts/experiences on this are appreciated.
We are a startup talking to some angel investors/early stage VC's. Our startup has been in existence for 8 months. So far it's bootstrapped. We've grown from 2 people to 10 people. We provide a web-based service to online businesses. We have half a dozen large customers and there are a few more in the pipeline. We are breaking even, so we don't have to raise fund, but it will accelerate our growth greatly. The amount we are looking for is between half to 1 million dollars.
We don't have a good sense of what's a reasonable valuation, or even how to think about it. A P/E ratio calculation just doesn't make sense at this stage. We appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Much like "what is my fair wage?", this depends on negotiations, right? If you jointly decide to value the round at $20 million, then $20 million was the valuation. How about you ask them for a number, and then you say "That is too low, we're already break even so we don't really need your money, I suppose we might accept it if you were prepared to go up to $BIGGER NUMBER?"

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can send me details (contact info is in my profile) I can give you a rough estimate. I'm a pretty active silicon valley angel so I know what price deals are happening at lately.

If the investor is a fund, they will want to get 10-25% (at least) of the company for whatever price they invest, if they are taking a board seat.

You also can price the round later via a convertible note. They may balk at this, some investors do not like them.

But, seriously - 10 people in eight months? Why are you raising capital? It sounds like you are rocking.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whatever makes you and your investor happy after the deal is done. If it was me I would expect to give up 10% - 30% depending on the size of the investment and who's making it.

Pay a lot more attention to issues of control and the other deal terms. They will help or hurt you a lot more than having a little more or less stock.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the comments. i was really hoping someone would give some kind of framework to think about valuation. things like whatever makes me happy or try to get as high valuation as possible are not so instructive. i know valuation at this stage is more art than science, but i hope there's some structured way to come up within a reasonable ballpark.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm far from an expert on the topic, but couldn't convertible debt be an option?</comment>


Glossary of Collective Nouns by Subject - <AUTHOR> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_collective_nouns_by_subject <comment><USER2> Apparently English is more or less unique in this respect - are there any language experts that can shed some light on this? (shed - why can light be shed? I guess showed/shed? EDIT of course shed as in shed skin, to give off - maybe?)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A 'Rash' of Dermatologists? A 'Tantrum' of Decorators? Lol! Is there really some governing authority that declares these things official? I just use the old standby, "Alotta". ;)</comment>


Microsoft buys Talko, another Ray Ozzie company - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-buys-ray-ozzie-talko/ <comment><USER2> Looks like we'll have to update [https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat- timeline.pdf](https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf) again.

The Talko team made awesome contributions to the Erlang AWS library ([https://github.com/talko/erlcloud](https://github.com/talko/erlcloud)) — huge props for that.

Also, glad we ([https://sameroom.io](https://sameroom.io)) didn't integrate with them, we almost did.

<comment><USER3> Awesome chart! While you are updating it, you may also want to reflect that Microsoft changed "Lync" to be called "Skype for Business" in April 2015 - [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn913785.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn913785.aspx) [http://blogs.technet.com/b/scottstu/archive/2015/04/13/contr...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/scottstu/archive/2015/04/13/controlling- the-client-experience-with-skype-for-business.aspx)

As far as I know "Skype for Business" is still using Lync's protocols, so your line would still be accurate.

<comment><USER2> Our understanding is that "Skype for Business" is the name of the current client. The client still talks to the Lync server, for all intents and purposes.

We just released an integration with Lync 2013 ([https://sameroom.io/open-a- tube/signin/proxy?type=lync](https://sameroom.io/open-a- tube/signin/proxy?type=lync)), so we're learning a lot more about this space. Will consider updating the chart :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked with people at Microsoft who then joined Talko - I'm confident this is just an acquihire if Ray isn't coming along. It's funny because those people basically left Microsoft only to come back to Microsoft, so it's a great setup for those employees since they'll get probably a nice bonus out of it; but the product itself went absolutely nowhere, I'm not surprised by this move at all.

<comment><USER5> Looks more like a bailout by Microsoft of Ozzie again. It's good to be connected at the top, you can make a failed venture look like success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the HN discussion for Talko's launch a year and a half ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353988)

</comment><comment><USER7> This may add some degree of context: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> A bit sad because I thought Talko had some great ideas. I hope some are picked up by Slack or Telegram as well as getting worked into Skype.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if Ozzie is coming with, or if he's dumping the company. I always hoped Ozzie would win the power struggle and run Microsoft, but Ballmer carried the day.

Maybe Nadella and Ozzie can work together. We might actually see Microsoft start pushing the boundaries of computing again. Nadella seems like a pretty good collaborator from what I've read.

<comment><USER10> The article says he is not coming with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Ray Ozzie sold out to Microsoft again, still doesn't get the world moves to Open Source" would be the better headline ;-)</comment>


Why I don't give fixed price. Software developer story. - <AUTHOR> http://a.khavr.com/2007/12/24/why-i-dont-give-fixed-price-software-developer-story/ Why fixed price estimates on software development contracts are ruining customer's business.  Some math inside. <comment><USER2> Fixed bid should mean fixed scope (fixed in STONE), with all change requests in writing and done on an hourly basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should, but it almost never does.

The only spec that's is not subject to interpretation is the software itself. Otherwise it all boils down to relationship between the customer and the developer: personal trust, etc. And, of course, this creates immense place for psychological games, which mostly are lose-lose kind of game.

<comment><USER2> If the client's playing games, don't give them an inch. It will never end well if you do.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like this guy just doesn't want to waste time.

You have to be reasonable if you expect good relations with someone. The developer should provide a higher estimate that provides a buffer for the uncertainty involved. Get a written spec before signing the contract.

<comment><USER2> > Sounds like this guy just doesn't want to waste time.

:)

> You have to be reasonable if you expect good relations with someone. The > developer should provide a higher estimate that provides a buffer for the > uncertainty involved. Get a written spec before signing the contract.

Exactly. (Although if the client agrees to a certain project scope, I don't mind writing the spec for them to sign off on). The other side of it is, good clients _should_ get more wiggle room, but you've got to have a strategy for avoiding horror stories.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Get paid what you're worth - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_Paid_What_You%27re_Worth

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a critical subject for many people here working on consultant jobs, considering a new job or even frustrated with their current compensation. I have known many people to undervalue their contribution and still others who inflate their importance.

My simple rules for happy employment:

Rule number one: Always remember you work for yourself. Your employer has merely rented your time to complete a task. Time has long passed when an individual could be secure in a lifelong working relationship with a corporation. Get everything you can from your employeer through fair negotiation upfront before you enter into agreement. Do not be afraid to ask. Squeaky hinges get oil.

Rule number two: You are worth as much as someone is willing to pay you - <USER2> more, no less. Every single conversation regarding compensation should be considered a negotiation. There are no hard and fast rules, only guidelines and suggestions.

Rule number three: Never, ever, take the first offer. Sleep on it.

Of course, the best employer is you. If you can be your own boss - do it by all means necessary. If you are not at that point yet, that is what rule number one is for. Own what you do for an employer as your own. That way you are the boss every day.

EDIT: had to repost, bad url. thanks to orborde for the heads up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really enjoyed this article, although I like to use Indeed.com's salary trending tool to get an idea of what jobs are being posted at, although it's such an average that I think there's probably a bit of disparity there.

Thanks for the post.</comment>


How Brain Waves Surf Sound Waves to Process Speech - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-brain-waves-surf-sound-waves-to-process-speech <comment><USER2> I'm baffled by the video of a sound that can be heard as either "green needle" or "brainstorm," depending on which word one imagines while listening to it. They don't even have the same number of syllables. I'd like to know what's going on in the brain to create this auditory illusion. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8)

<comment><USER3> First I heard brainstorm, then green needle and then brain needle, ha ha! Yeah that was weird!

Found a related video that talks a bit about this sort of thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDiXQl7grPQ)

Also related is this one that I remember seeing on HN or Reddit a while back: [https://soundcloud.com/whyy-the-pulse/an-audio- illusion](https://soundcloud.com/whyy-the-pulse/an-audio-illusion). There is an article about that one as well at [https://gizmodo.com/this-audio-illusion- will-make-you-never-...](https://gizmodo.com/this-audio-illusion-will-make- you-never-trust-your-ears-1593113324) but I never bothered to read the article because I think the audio recording is sufficiently interesting in its own right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the results would be different if the study subjects were people who often listen to podcasts or audiobooks in faster speed settings.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting hypothesis. I listen to audiobooks at 2 or 3 times speed, depending on the clarity of the readers voice. When I first heard the "green needle" vs. "brainstorm" audio, I heard "brainstorm" once but then the pitch of the audio seem to shift up and I could only hear "green needle" after that. The change in audio quality was similar to what I've experienced when listening to a book at 1X speed and then shifting it up to 2X or 3X. I haven't been able to reproduce this though. Now the recording always sounds like "green needle" to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I'd like to hear more about this "entrainment" concept mentioned. How does the brain know what the "envelope" is? Sounds like magic.

<comment> a-dub It's the peaks in the spectral domain. The cochlea is lined with little hairs that are tuned to different frequency bands. When they're stimulated by sound waves, the nerves they're attached to create tiny electrical impulses which propagate into the larger networks of neurons that make up the auditory cortex.

When a neurophysiologist uses the term "entrainment" it usually means that they either observe neuronal firing rates or spectral content of energy over populations that is somehow directly influenced by properties of the auditory or visual stimulus. In cases like this, it's like "we played an x hertz tone and shortly after stimulus onset we saw energy at x hz appear in a population of neurons"

<comment><USER7> Perfect explanation, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting enough :P</comment>


Ask HN: Have $15k to invest. suggestions please. - <AUTHOR>

 Have saved about $15k and do not have a need for this money for the next 5 years. Please suggest where i can invest this amount with decent returns, say somewhere in 12-15% range. I have not  tried investing in stocks due to volatility, hence any pointers on stock/bond investments would also be helpful.
  Appreciate your time/suggestions very much. <comment><USER2> 12-15% a year is very high indeed, and not a realistic expectation. Because you have a limited amount to invest, your best option may likely be to invest it in any number of index funds. These are very, very low in their expense ratios and try to track indices or sections thereof without lots of management (buying and selling, etc) of the sort that causes mutual funds to overwhelmingly underperform the broader markets.

You can open an account at ScotTrade for free, and then buy a few index funds that you like. You could either put these into mutual funds, like Vanguard's VFINX US S&P fund, or buy exchange-traded funds which track indices as well.

Investing early is wise, the key thing is not to try to beat the markets (at least not with YOUR money on the line!) and also note that volatility will make you unhappy if you check often. You'll be up and down but, over the long term, hopefully up. But if you check frequently, the "down" times will make you unhappier than the happy-times will make you happy. So, set it and forget it, if you take a diversified and relatively low-risk approach.

For 15k, you could invest across bonds, US stocks, international stocks, emerging markets, and more, all without significant cost or overhead -- if you play the broader markets, instead of trying to pick winners.

Most importantly, keep educating yourself, and not just what other people say on random internet forums ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I consider HN to be a very informative forum hence posted it here :) My goal is not to beat the markets, at the same time not to leave the money in Savings account which does not get any significant interest either. Volatility is a concern, hence I had stayed away from stocks till now. One other suggestion was to track some specific companies for a period, and invest based on the results. Investing in index funds seems like a good choice, and will explore that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is not an appropriate forum in which to seek or give investment advice of that sort. Those who respond risk accidentally running afoul of securities law and you risk getting (and, worse - taking) very bad advice.

<comment><USER4> And then there is always the risk that someone will make a smartaleck suggestion to the effect of "write me a personal check".

(Of course, tonight I'm the one tempted to make such a suggestion. :-/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're talking about 12-15% after 5 years and not 12-15% per year, you can stick it in a GIC and not worry about risk. I'm in Canada and ING's 5 year GIC is 3% per year, which will end up giving you almost 16% after compounding (1.03^5 = 1.159).

If you're looking for 12-15% a year, you'll have to be doing some very risky stuff. Returns like that are hard to come by. Let me know if you find anything though ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Berkeshire hathaway and AFLAC both have returned above your target rate over the course of decades. There are also many canadian resource companies that will return a good percentage in dividends and then stock appreciation, plus you'd benefit from the depreciation of the dollar against the CAD. IF you go that route, look for one that is adding resources faster than they are depleating them-- some have really high dividends but they are burning thru their reserves.

%12-%15 is not that hard to get, and doesn't involve substantial risk, but does involve doing your homework.

I would recommend one of Timothy Vick's books on Buffett for some advice.

Back when I was in the equities markets, I was able to predict the return I would get from a stock, buy it, and then, on average, exceed that return. Stocks are not gambling when you buy low, pre-calculate expected return over 5-10 years, and only buy when you are getting a good deal based on the expected return.

I'm out of the equities market because the US dollar is in serious danger, and I would not recommend bonds for this very same reason. I've been doing better in precious metals than I did in equities. But if I were in equities I'd also research some of the good precious metals companies-- some are very well run, and have both equity and growth appreciation by moving assets from discovery to production, as well as leverage to the decline in paper currencies which will cause their resources to have a larger market value. It is one thing to buy gold in the ground for $20 an ounce, it is quite another when gold is going up in price while you're doing it. But this sector takes more research.

IF you're willing to put in some time, it isn't that hard, but first I would recommend learning. The vick book, or Mary Buffetts "buffetology" are good resources. Find people who cover the sectors that interest you, learn all you can, and only invest in your circle of competance.

<comment><USER6> Also, one thing, if it is a new sector, consider if you can do some paper trading based on actual returns in the past. For instance, get annual reports from several companies from 2004. Try to get a survey of companies in the sector, and not be influenced based on what you know now about the companys.

If you're married it would be best to have your spouse anonymize the companies by copying down the key figures from the annual reports, and then the price on Jan 30th, for each of the next 5 years. Have her keep the company key seperate.

Analyze them on that basis, then look into the prices on the stock market in January 2005. Use those prices and discounted cash flow analysis to predict what their prices will be in 2010. Invest a fake $150,000 in the companies based on those calculations.

Then wait a week. Each week, look up the prices for the companeis a year later and decide if your thesis still stands. For this example, lets just pretend like you have no access to news, no annual reports for 2005, just the price on Jan 30th, 2006. Decide to re-allocate if you want, but pay $100 for each transaction (sales and buys). IF you're down and you sell then you're locking in that loss.

Do this for the next 5 weeks until you've covered the time period to Jan 30th 2010.... and then look to see how your companies did.

Try to draw your conclusions before you connect the fake companies names with the real companies.

Don't forget to account for dividends in the interim as well.

This can be very instructive-- but be sure to learn about how DCF and current trading price affect risk. IF one of the companies did poorly, was it because of bad management? An externality that was unpredictable? etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I will check out the book, and the method you suggest seems very fair enough. Appreciate it very much.</comment></comment></comment>


FindChips – Get instant insight into any electronic component - <AUTHOR> https://www.findchips.com/ <comment><USER2> More alternatives used in markets in Shenzhen China

www.icgoo.net

www.ickey.cn

www.hqew.com

www.szlcsc.com

And for more international parts (still used in mainland a lot)

www.eciaauthorized.com

Octopart is a more generic site for discovering chips and getting an idea of the price, but still it fetches crappy prices from Digikey, Farnell, Mouser, etc.

If your product is being made in China and you are making the design choices, a quick Taobao search (or using the above links) is great to see how popular a part is. Not recommending to buy parts from Taobao though (unless you are more seasoned). There are also alot of _agents_ that can source parts maybe 1-2 levels below the original factory. Their prices are so good it's unbelievable but they are hard to find and validate. Having volume also helps.

<comment><USER3> Seconding LCSC here, their prices are pretty damn good for chinese market stuff (and for international musthaves they carry pretty good stock), english support is decent and the shipping combo with PCBs from JLCPCB makes it a nobrainer.

I use them for my keyboards[0] and love them!

[0] [https://www.gboards.ca/](https://www.gboards.ca/)

<comment><USER4> Can you order just a few components, for hobbyists, or are they for big runs? I'm thinking 50-100 resistors and such, for making one or two of whatever I'm making.

<comment><USER5> They also sell cut tape. So you can order from 1 to 100 parts. There are however some parts that have MOQ of ~50, but those are so cheap that 100 of them would be less than 10 USD.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what I need, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always found it strange how datasheets are distributed over random websites and ftp servers usually covered in watermarks and could go offline at any time. Is there any effort at archiving and distributing these pdfs?

<comment><USER7> In addition to the archiving challenge, just the fact that PDFs are the de facto standard in distributing datasheets makes it very challenging to build knowledge bases like FindChips since it is so unfriendly to parse. There is a huge amount of data variety in these documents in terms of structure, formatting, and language.

<comment><USER8> For whatever reason footprints, pinouts, and dimensions have been distributed via pdfs as the de facto standard, leading to a bunch of wasted work as people have to create their own foot prints, symbols, and 3d models over and over again.

<comment><USER9> It might seem wasted, but the reality is that a "standard" footprint does not really make sense. Soldering and assembly is not a perfect craft and it requires hundreds of considerations to methods used, environment of use, desired reliability etc. for example look up the footprint differences for wave soldering compared to hand soldering. For aerospace use reliability is king, for mobile devices space is a premium.

Furthermore, there aren't really any standards for packages and hence it is difficult to trust foorprints. A TSOP package from one manufacturer manufacturer is not necessarily the same as a TSOP package from another. This is not a hypothetical — I've been bitten by this.

There are tools to assist in and automate a lot of this, but since most of the time is spend on other parts of a product it simply isn't very critical.

<comment><USER9> An appendix.

A lot of good stuff has begun to happen in this regard. At least KiCad has a large and pretty decent quality collection of footprints; I think other tools are making similar efforts.

However, I wish they would make it easy to adjust these footprints or make derivatives of them, without having to essentially redraw them.

For a looong time I've wanted to apply geometric constraint solving to drawing footprints. This would allow for having a base footprint which defines the constraints and then parameter files could introduce the specific dimensions needed. I've been working on it at [https://github.com/henrikh/footwork- ecad](https://github.com/henrikh/footwork-ecad) and the parts are there, but I'd love to collaborate on it with someone :-)

<comment><USER10> For a long while geda's pcb used mostly parametrized footprints written in M4. People mostly hated them.

If one is wandering into that path, the hardest problem to solve is defining a good language/library in what people can describe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice. My current method is limited to looking at various sites like [http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/default.aspx](http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/default.aspx) (I live in Tokyo). It's nice to visit their Akihabara store too: [http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/contents2/akiba.aspx](http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/contents2/akiba.aspx) It's interesting to compare listings, e.g. for part 2SC945L-K-T92-K: [http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/g/gI-11428/](http://akizukidenshi.com/catalog/g/gI-11428/) and [https://www.findchips.com/detail/2SC945L-K-T92-K/4317462-Uni...](https://www.findchips.com/detail/2SC945L-K-T92-K/4317462-Unisonic%20Technologies%20Co%20Ltd?quantity=1)

</comment><comment><USER12> If only sites like this existed when I was doing design work. Really looks quite helpful to have a distributor agnostic site. Not sure about whether the popularity metrics are useful, you might end up using popular chips in the same way you end up with a lot of 10k resistors (old argument that all component values should be calculated and thought about).

</comment><comment><USER13> Findchips is amazing. They visited our company last year and pitched their software. I gathered a small audience and we learned about what they have to offer. We subscribed and it became immediately apparent their service is essential. In a market with so much allocation, finding stock on parts is made easy with their channel analysis. This is one of the few subscriptions I've ever really felt was fully justified.

</comment><comment><USER14> FindChips Oemstrade Octopart Chip index These are all a decade old and easy to find.

I try not to be cynical but if you are trying to source components either as a hobbyist or procurement professional and ARE NOT using one of these easily found sites then you are getting goosed.

<comment><USER15> > if you are trying to source components either as a hobbyist ... and ARE NOT > using one of these easily found sites then you are getting goosed.

Maybe, but my volume is so low and orders so infrequent, it doesn't really matter if I pay $1 for an IC or $0.5, so I usually just go with what either is the most convenient (eg sparkfun breakout boards) or the quickest shipping (Farnell has free next day delivery for me). Having said that, these sites are great resources and I do check every now and again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's nice, but it doesn't tell me all that much I can't get from other sources like Octopart

What does "parts popularity" mean, anyway? You probably don't have sales volume. Number of distributors? Part popularity is actually useful; you want to design using popular parts when possible, to avoid supply problems. Seeed Studio is big on that; that's why they have a recommended parts list of parts they can easily get in Shenzhen.

<comment><USER17> > you want to design using popular parts when possible, to avoid supply > problems.

How does this design strategy actually avoid supply problems, e.g. when a component manufacturer issues EOL notice, what stops professional logistics/procurement staff at Big Fish Corp--whose design activities were likely responsible for the supply glut to begin with--from pushing lifetime buys to ensure sustainment of their product line, instantly draining global authorized distributor stock overnight?

<comment><USER18> yes, EOL's and ECN's pop-up a lot. Sometimes it's nothing (a pin-compatible alternative exists), sometimes it's a nightmare requiring a design change.

At my work, we have seats with SiliconExpert, this is a tool that you can use to get availability "risk assessments" for your BOM among other things like RoHS stuff and conflict minerals status.

I've never seen an "overnight global supply draining" occur for a part. There are distributors that make a living buying up millions of components throughout their lifecycle and then sell them for ~20X their cost (or higher) when the part goes EOL. It might be annoying, but these vendors can keep you going until a suitable replacement is located, designed-in, qualified and rolled out to production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Findchips was started by Randy Sargent in 1998 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/randy- sargent-a93535/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/randy-sargent-a93535/)

More: [https://hackaday.com/2013/09/09/how-findchips-started-as- a-n...](https://hackaday.com/2013/09/09/how-findchips-started-as-a-nasa- engineers-hack/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Professionally, a much more important question is how can I _trust_ this data? Any perceived convenience in data aggregation strikes me as all for naught if specific details will require corroboration from the horse's mouth anyways before having sufficient confidence to make a design/procurement decision. Otherwise, it's a nice resource to leverage if its inherent risks are within your comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER20> Make sure to double check any CAD models you pull off sites like this.

I learned a very lengthy and expensive lesson trusting something as simple as a 3 pin SOT23 transistor.

<comment><USER21> In my experience the reason why one learns expensive lesson (happened to me also and it was the only case when I had to respin board due to wrong footprint) is that you just end up thinking "this is too simple to get wrong".

I had my share of shipped products with extensive manual rework, professionally made bodge boards and respins of 3ft square boards (which there were enough that the board does not use letters for revisions, but timestamps of when the gerbers were exported), but it usually involved questionable component choices and attempts to route what should be controlled impedance diffpair across 10s of centimeters of two layer board and cheapest connectors we could get, but really the only case of respin due to wrong footprint involved measly BC840 NPN transistor with rotated pinout... (on the other hand hand soldering the transistor involved at the 45deg angle solved the issue for first batch which was hand assembled anyway :))

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This tool seems to have similar information as Silicon Expert - which is pretty expensive but has a nice system where you plug in your BOM and it gives you the part risk, RoHS status, and possible alternatives if available.

<comment><USER23> >it gives you the part risk

Do you mind explaining a little what "part risk" means?

<comment><USER22> Risk in this context is how likely the part will go out of stock or "end of life"-ed. If a part has no alternatives it is even more risky!

When I designed a large board oftentimes several of the tiny parts such as capacitors or resistors would go out of stock but this generally is not a problem if you are using a common part. If you have a good contract manufacturer you can flag any parts like these as "use equivalent OK" and they will automatically pick a new part for you if necessary, with the same or better ratings.

Some companies also use their own internal part numbers for each electronic component (like a 10k 0805 resistor will be part AB1235) so then they can map that AB1235 part number to a list of acceptable manufacturer part numbers. That seems like too much work for me though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice alternative to [https://octopart.com](https://octopart.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> Whelp, I didn't know this existed but it both validates and de-motivates an idea I had for a side project recently.

<comment><USER26> Just wait until you hear about Octopart!

<comment><USER27> Thanx. ublock is blocking FindChips. Octopart looks great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there a good PCB assembly Fab that you would recommend? Eg. I get my boards from JLCPCB but now need to get it assembled.

The ones I know of so far are Seeedstudio, Macrofab, PCBway, Bittetle (7pcb), and Oshpark. But all of them either only do the boards or both.

<comment><USER29> [https://www.smallbatchassembly.com/](https://www.smallbatchassembly.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How would you use data like this: [https://www.findchips.com/detail/tlc555cd/2477-Texas%20Instr...](https://www.findchips.com/detail/tlc555cd/2477-Texas%20Instruments?quantity=1)

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice site. By the way, does anyone know the easiest way to get points to download datasheets off CSDN? Using chinese services internationally is so hard...

</comment><comment><USER31> Adblock blocks all the buy now buttons..

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting - tried a 2n3055 - lotsa stuff listed; tried it's complementary (2n2955) - zippo...

</comment><comment><USER33> hmm, I'm finding ublock origin is blocking most of the links when I click on componnents

<comment><USER34> Same here. As always, you're paying with your privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Registration is denied.

I tried two different emails... looking forward to using your service!

<comment><USER36> I also got the "Registration is denied" error multiple times with no other error messages.

Does your company name have any non-alphanumeric characters? I removed the "&" from mine and was able to register.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I prefer octopart for this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Very impressive collection!

</comment><comment><USER39> For a second I thought this was a search engine for the edible kind of chips.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's an absolute fuckton of components listed here. Very helpful.</comment>


Amanda Ripley's 'Smartest Kids in the World' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/books/review/amanda-ripleys-smartest-kids-in-the-world.html

<comment><USER2> So how do we make a broad cultural impact with examples like these from other cultures?

That's the question I think is most essential. There are no doubt a lot of people that know these stories at the top of the hierarchy, like policy- makers. But the accounts in this article emphasize the role of the _culture_ in backing the investments and choices made in education. So what we really need is a cultural shift from the bottom up.

Thinking about the way that Americans actually engage other cultures at this moment, I think an effective solution is a reality television series. Seriously! It has turned out to be a very effective medium for people who are fascinated by very different cultures to explore and engage with them. Documentaries are great too, but still a lot more top-down.

Now then, here's the idea -- if you want to change American education and influence the debate, make a really good reality series about Finnish teachers who are struggling to be selected and meet the high standards to be teachers in that country.

<comment><USER3> Americans will become more interested in school and less in tv when the actual reality in the U.S. becomes as hierarchical as in Europe.</comment></comment>


Does anyone else experience Sky traffic shaping SSH - <AUTHOR> I have a rubbish internet connection (comes free with my rent), and get around 1-1.5MB/s normally, provided by Sky (UK).
However, SSH connections are incredibly slow, slow SSH reponsiveness, and scps/git clones over SSH get around 50KB/s.
Does anyone else experience this? <comment><USER2> Does SSH over a nonstandard port improve speed? If you don't have a host set up like that you can try it with GitHub: [https://help.github.com/articles/using-ssh-over-the-https- po...](https://help.github.com/articles/using-ssh-over-the-https-port/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that's a good idea, however, I generally use port 222 for a particular server, which I have noticed any improvements at all. But thanks for the suggestion! :D

<comment><USER3> It would be very useful if you tried this, i'd lvoe to know</comment></comment></comment>


Using public domain for instant content generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.usa.gov/ <comment><AUTHOR> One of the problems our project faces before launching is building up enough content to make the site useful for early users. Thanks to everyone's tax dollars, our problem is now solved and then some.

I've found ready to go databases and articles that will make our site an incredible resource for our users the day we launch. Can't they already access the data you ask? Of course they can, but the information is hard to find and not organized in a useful way.

We've set out to change that this year by making the information applicable and easy to find/search, add in local social networking features and more to our site. I'm so excited to find this I'm shaking!

Back to the drawing board (literally). Who needs coffee when you have adrenaline?</comment>


Seasteading: Homesteading the High Seas for Liberty - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5747

<comment><USER2> states will not allow significant competition. any seasteading communities that grow prosperous economically will be busted as tax shelters.

<comment><USER3> I doubt any seasteading community will ever give a government something to worry about. These kind of intentional communities always look attractive on paper but are very limited in practical ways. If they are small enough that they remain philosophical uniform they can't harness growth; and if they grow, they quickly diverge ideologically.

I live in the middle of the ocean - on an island of 200,000 people, and I can tell you no amount of money or intellectual curiosity would make me take my kid to an even smaller, more insular community, with fewer opportunities, no matter how sympathetic I was to their governance model.</comment></comment>


Airbus electric passenger drone makes first flight at Pendleton UAS range - <AUTHOR> http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/robo-air-taxi-makes-first-flight-pendleton-airport <comment><AUTHOR> more info: [https://www.fastcompany.com/40518081/inside-airbuss-mad- dash...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40518081/inside-airbuss-mad-dash-to-get- a-robo-air-taxi-off-the-ground)</comment>


William Gibson -- Agrippa (a book of the dead) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa_(a_book_of_the_dead)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this mentioned in a comment buried in HN, and found it a fascinating concept!</comment>


Ebeats $77.77 contest nearing it's end, scj already claiming victory - <AUTHOR> http://rubyists.github.com/2011/04/11/ebeats-implementations-competition-scj-owns.html scj is claiming victory already.  With only 4 days to go, does anyone wan't to take him down? <comment><USER2> If I'm going to learn to renumber my whole day anyway, why not just switch to UTC and preserve hundreds of years of convention in notation and utility?

<comment><USER3> UTC does not address the whole issue of different timezones and such which ebeats and swatch internet time do.

<comment><USER4> The same problems still exist with ebeats. How do I know if 900 ebeats is the middle of the night or middle of the day for a specific country? I don't know until I convert it to their local time. The only advantage I can see is that you can display a universal time code with only three digits, saving space on a small watch face.

<comment><AUTHOR> it took less than a week to 'know' the time in beats. we've use this to coordinate time on our team, spread from Texas to EU to Japan.</comment></comment></comment></comment>